Cycling in Brussels: Does It Pay Off?

Estimation of the direct and
indirect impacts with a modal share of 20% cyclists

In collaboration with Pro Velo, TML made​​ two economic analyses of cycling in
Brussels.

A first analysis
compares the social costs and benefits,
leading to the following conclusions:

An ambitious cycling policy in 2020 for the Brussels Capital
Region realizes social benefits of 300 to 550 million depending on
the chosen scenarios and assumptions.

The benefits of this ambitious cycling
policy in 2020 are 8 to 19 times greater
than the costs. In 2012, the benefits were
between 100 and 200 million and
4 to 7 times greater than the
costs.

The benefits exceed the costs
in all scenarios despite the fact that
we only considered monetizable
effects.

The number of deaths
due to traffic accidents decreased thanks
to cycling, but the number of injured people increased.

The benefit/cost ratio considers the following benefits:
health benefits, environmental benefits, benefits due
to decreased
congestion, the savings in transport expenditure of households, the
savings on the expenditure of public transport and a possible reduction
in traffic accidents. The costs in this ratio
are those related to extra government spending to
encourage bicycle use and the extra traffic accidents.

We did not consider the effects of cycling
on the liveability of cities or on psychological well-being
because
they are very difficult to quantify and
to monetarize.

In a second analysis, we estimate the turnover and employment in the
bicycle sector, leading to the following
conclusion:

Today functional cycling creates more
than 200 jobs in Brussels and nearly 700 in 2020 with an ambitious
cycling and transport policy. These figures do not
consider jobs that will eventually be lost
in other sectors.